Survival Tips for Working Moms

Water. When I first wrote this post, my #1 was “caffeine.” I had convinced myself it was necessary for mental acuity and basic survival. Not true! A big glass of ice water in the morning together with some stretching, and lots of water all day long….so much better for maintaining a state of Zen.

Sleep. Turn the screen off and hit the hay at a decent hour. Email can wait.

Meditation + Mantra.

Sitting serenely to meditate outside surrounded by natural beauty might not be in the cards for a daily ritual. Try using the commute to give mental focus on envisioning your state of being for work versus home.

It’s easy to inadvertently let the lines blur. You can either lose respect on the work front with an imbalanced display of warmth over strength, or get home after a stressful day and let the frustration unfairly spill over to your kids who have been eager for your loving attention all day. When it feels really hard to show more strength at work, or more patience and love at home — try pausing for 10 seconds and running a personal mantra in your head. Personal fave: I can. I will. I am.

Exercise. Everything that I write on this post is really a reminder list for me — not something I’m proudly doing every day and advising others to do. I continue to struggle with this one in particular, having convinced myself it was impossible to fit exercise into my work+family care schedule. And the negative impact to my body, mind, and spirit has reached a point of badness I can no longer ignore. I’m starting with baby steps — daily early AM exercises at home and physical therapy 2x a week to heal my back, wrecked from hours and hours of hunching over a computer and a few rear-end car accidents last year.

Daily Greens for the Family. For breakfast: smoothies with frozen kale, frozen berries, coconut water or milk, or milk of choice, nut butter. For dinner: spinach can be added to or made a side for just about anything.

A digital family calendar. We’re all about the shared Google calendar. I’ve been a fan of the Cozi app for scheduling family events and scheduling text and email alerts. Though I haven’t tried it yet, I’ve also heard that AboutOne is great.

Weekly personal time and date nights. If you’re an introvert like me, alone time is critical to recharge from people-interaction overload. And marriages always seem to come last in families with two working parents. Weekly date nights can do wonders — especially if you can avoid talking about anything that feels like a family to-do list or an issue to solve at work.

Remember to breathe. If you haven’t heard this song already – check out Alexi Murdoch’s Breathe. So good….